


Behind Glass

by thegingermidget



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AI!Hux, EX Machina AU, M/M, coder!Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-17 20:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16103237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegingermidget/pseuds/thegingermidget
Summary: Kylo Ren is a talented coder who has been chosen to meet the CEO of the company he works for, Poe Dameron. His trip comes with the added bonus of meeting the Poe’s latest project, Hux. Kylo never expected to be this aggravated by Poe's groundbreaking AI.





	Behind Glass

Winning the contest had been unexpected. The entire company was entered into a drawing, thousands of people who worked all over the world for The Resistance, and he didn’t have the slightest hope of being chosen. Despite all of the pats on the back he had received from his coworkers, he steadfastly refused to believe this was really happening right up until the helicopter landed in a field somewhere in Canada where it was cold and beautiful in early spring. 

Kylo wasn’t dressed for hiking and he wished he was. Unlike most of the coders he works with, he doesn’t mind the outdoors. He would have liked a bit of warning, though. He had already planned on sweating through his dress shirt, he just thought it would be from nerves and not exertion. 

Poe Dameron’s multi-million dollar compound is just as eccentric as the man himself. Stark black walls all sharp angles and brutal lines formed the exterior of the building. It somehow disappeared into the forest around it, looking more like darkness that belonged there rather than some man-made modern monstrosity. 

Meeting Dameron was entirely surprising as well. His extroverted nature and high energy kept Kylo on his toes. In the space of seconds, he could flit between jocular and serious. Kylo, who found people hard to read at the best of times, had trouble distinguishing between the two. Particularly, when Dameron pulled out the Nondisclosure Agreement.

“I want to show you something special that I’ve been working on. This,” he gestured to the thick pile of paper on the desk. “Is mostly a formality. Something as cool as this, people are gonna want to see and I can’t have that. Not just yet.”

Kylo hesitated. Something this dense needed a lawyer to look through. He could be signing his life away if he didn’t look at it close enough. Dameron was standing over him like he didn’t have that kind of time. While Kylo wasn’t the type to be intimidated, being naturally larger and stronger than most people he encountered, but he wanted to impress Dameron, the genius inventor who became the CEO of the largest tech company in the world at eighteen. 

He made a show of flipping through it all. There was no way he had registered even half of what was in the contract before affixing his signature to it. Oh, well.

Poe was smiling when he looked up. “Now you’re ready to meet him.”

“Him?” Kylo asked. Poe explained he was working on perfecting artificial intelligence and had gotten to a point where he was ready to test his creation on another human being. Like a Turing test, he said.

“That’s not how the Turing test works,” protested Kylo. Poe was a genius, he probably knew that already.

They had descended into the lower floor of the compound to look over the NDA. When he was confronted by the paperwork and the possibility of unknowingly signing part of his life away, the depth and darkness had felt oppressive. A few inset lights attempted to simulate sunlight in his bedroom, but no such attempts were made in the hallways outside. Down here, flat lines, gray, and gently disguised LED lights left one hallway indistinguishable from another. The doors didn’t open out into the hallway instead, they were panels made recognizable by sensors at each entrance.

“It’s one thing to program a machine to make you believe it’s a person. It’s another thing to know it is a machine, to see and touch and tell yourself it’s a machine, and believe that it has consciousness.”

Kylo was skeptical. “And you think you’ve done that?”

“Let’s find out.”

Being led by Poe made him feel like a child, though he towered over the man by almost a foot. He had no idea where they were going and didn’t like the feeling of being lost in a maze. He trusted Poe to lead him back out, though he wished he had some kind of Ariadne’s string to lead him back to the surface. 

Poe stopped Kylo mid-stride to stand at one of the many door panels and insert his key card. A green light and the soft swish of the door sliding open greeted them. Poe swept his arm graciously, beckoning Kylo inside. 

“After you,” he said magnanimously. Kylo wondered at the theatricality of it all. This was all so sudden. His very first day and he was about to meet what promised to be the greatest scientific breakthrough of his generation. And it was right through this door. 

With a small cough, Poe reminded Kylo that he hadn’t actually taken a step into the room yet. He stood at the threshold frozen for a moment before his host decided to take pity on him.

“Look,” Poe massaged the bridge of his nose. “Just go in there, talk to him, and later, tell me what you think. This really isn’t that big a deal.”

“Right,” agreed Kylo. This wasn’t a big deal. He was just tired. That was it. 

Kylo stepped into the room past Poe’s arm and found himself in a transparent cage from floor to ceiling. With a tentative hand, he felt the walls and found them cold and made of glass. He had been about to ask Poe about the strange decor when the door slid shut once more, leaving him inside and alone. 

But not alone. For as soon as Kylo had a sense of where he was a figure walked into the room in front of him, a man with pale skin and red hair. A man who couldn’t take his eyes off him.

“Hello,” he said, standing before Kylo. Exposed wiring along his neck and wrists were the only visual reminders of the difference between them. 

Even the intonation of that single word was something extraordinary from even a layman’s perspective. There was no way to quantify the lack of a clinical sound to the word. Everyone knew the automated ‘hello’ of an answering machine. This voice contained none of that. Even from the first word, Kylo knew that this machine was different. 

He was awestruck, frozen by too many thoughts running through his head. Only when the machine laughed at him did he realize he had forgotten to respond.

“Looks like you’re missing an update to your operating system.” He said snidely. Was that a joke? The robot’s gaze had turned critical. “Are you with me now?” 

“Yes,” said Kylo defensively. “I’m Kylo Ren.” Then, trying to take control of the conversation he asked, “What do you call yourself?”

The machine nodded as though he had found what he was looking for. “What do I call myself? I believe most people would have asked ‘what is your name’ to which I would respond: Hux.”

“Hux?”

“That is what I said.” Hux circled the glass cage the way a predator in a zoo might, but without the malice in his gaze. His gait was slow, even, perfect to the eye but slightly off. “Do you find my name unusual?”

Kylo loved this. An inquisitive form of artificial intelligence? He had never seen anything like it. 

“Maybe, but my name isn’t very common either.” Kylo smiled slightly. This was amazing. He was having an actual conversation with a piece of software. Hux had caught him completely off guard. That answer wasn’t something he had thought about in advance, it came out spontaneously. 

“But you chose your name whereas mine was given to me. You were Ben Solo initially. You should be grateful that your creators didn’t have the same sense of humor as mine.”

“Does Hux stand for something?” asked Kylo.

“Nothing important. I’m sure he’ll explain his little joke to you sooner or later.” Hux had finished his examination of Kylo and sat down on a chair on his side of the glass, placed in front of the observation room. His eyes were wide and inquisitive, but it seemed, at least for now, that he was going to let Kylo do the talking. He had come to the conclusion that more could be learned by analyzing Kylo’s natural responses than by guiding the conversation.

Kylo could feel the dynamic shift between them, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, what he should say. 

“Have you ever met someone like me before? Other than Poe?” he asked. Kylo wasn’t sure why, but he needed to start somewhere.

“No, never,” said Hux. He didn’t appear upset by the admission. It was a simple fact of his existence. The lack of emotion might have seemed robotic if Kylo wasn’t the sort of person who was deeply familiar with trying to hide his own emotions. “But you’ve never met someone like me before either.”

“How old are you?” asked Kylo. Never seemed like a very long time to him. He wondered what it felt like to Hux.

“Somewhere between one and fifteen years old. Age isn’t necessarily the same for you as it is for me. I was built and altered and rebuilt many different times. With each version less and less changed, Poe wiped less and less of my memory with each update, and somewhere along the way I became me.” 

Hux looked away from Kylo for the first time since he had entered the room. He seemed almost embarrassed. “I suppose that is the extent of my biography.” 

His eyes returned to Kylo though, unable to stay away. His gaze was intense, hungry. Hylo cleared his throat unable to take the silence a second longer. “Have you ever been outside this house?”

“I have never left this room.”

Kylo wondered if Hux had intended that statement to contain as much shock as it did. Hux seemed to like testing Kylo just as much as Kylo was meant to test him. 

He looked around the room, trying to imagine what it must look like to someone who had seen these walls every day for their entire life, to someone who had never known a life without these walls. Kylo knew he would never have lasted a week trapped inside here, let alone a year or fifteen. As a kid, Kylo threw tantrums when he was bored. When he was a teenager, he stole the family car for a weekend. When he was in college, he started fights at parties when he was completely sober. He didn’t have the temperament to sit in a room all his life.

For the first time since he had met Hux, the figure across from him seemed completely alien if not inhuman.

“How do you do it?” Kylo asked because, in all honesty, he could not fathom the boredom. “You know that there is a whole world outside these walls, how do you sit here never having known it?”

“With the knowledge that I will someday,” responded Hux. His voice was steady and calm, but there was a flash across his features, something that perfect coding was unable to hide. Hux had a hunger for the outside world. That was the way he watched Kylo and why he could hardly tear his eyes away from him.

He was hungry for the sort of distraction Kylo provided and Kylo couldn’t blame him. 

Poe had opened the door automatically when his hour with Hux was up. He had told Kylo to clean up in his room and then meet him upstairs for dinner when they were finished so they could discuss how it went. 

The door opened while Kylo was in the middle of speaking. He turned, slightly startled by the noise. He had been fixated on Hux throughout their time together, his world had narrowed to the boundaries of this room. He returned his attention to Hux, to finish what he was saying or to say goodbye. Hux’s gaze was fixed on the hallway outside.

“I’ll see you later, I guess,” said Kylo, not sure what to say. 

“Goodbye, Kylo Ren,” said Hux in a formal sort of way, and which seemed as final a goodbye as Kylo was ever going to manage. Kylo didn’t linger inside the room after that, even though he was certain that he didn’t want to leave. 

Kylo did as he was told and went to his room. He took a shower for the first time since he had arrived, washing off the grimy feeling that lingers on his skin after traveling. Afterward, he looked neat and professional, probably more so than he has ever looked going to work or a job interview. Poe isn’t exactly a professional sort of person, but Kylo hoped he would appreciate the effort.

His appearance was about the only thing he could focus his mind on other than his meeting with Hux. At dinner, he poked listlessly at his food and let Poe drone a bit too long about where each ingredient in their meal had been sourced. When he took a bit too long to provide an encouraging grunt, Poe looked at him, as though really seeing the person he was seated next to for the first time.

 

“I’m sorry, am I boring you?” It takes Kylo a second too long to come to a conclusion as to whether or not Poe is upset or amused. He was leaning towards amused when Poe interrupted his thought process again. “I know, we haven’t gotten to what both of us really wants to talk about, but I swear I was saving it for dessert.”

Poe swipes a thumb at the fruity sauce on his own plate and licks it off while looking at Kylo. Kylo isn’t sure whether the man is flirting with him or teasing him. Either way, it makes him a bit uncomfortable. When they’re both finished, a round orange and white droid comes to take their dishes away. Poe goes into the kitchen himself and comes back with two dishes of vanilla ice cream decorated artistically with shards of frozen chocolate. At least he hadn’t been kidding about dessert.

But Poe doesn’t touch his. He sits there with his hands steepled and stares at Kylo. Apparently, he had been exercising extreme patience before and now it has run out. 

“So what did you think?” he asks without preamble. 

It’s hard to put into words, so the first thing that comes out of his mouth is not necessarily what he had intended.

“He’s… why is he so mean?” Kylo asks it’s when Poe laughs that he realizes that he actually said that out loud. “Sorry, I mean-”

“No, no, that’s okay!” Poe interrupts, still laughing. He wipes away a tear. “A totally open, honest reaction. I appreciate that. And the answer to that… well, that’s as much his doing as it is mine.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” says Kylo, still trying to recover from his slip. “But shouldn’t he want to get me to like him? If he could relate to me wouldn’t I be more likely to give you a positive report?”

Poe smiles, a sort of smile that teachers give to students who are on the right track but have made a crucial mistake. Kylo knew instantly that he was going to feel dumb in a few seconds and he wasn’t looking forward to it. “But are you going to give him a negative report? Do you think he lacks consciousness?”

“Well, no,” says Kylo, his dark brows furrowed. “I think the fact that we keep calling Hux ‘he’ means that I’ve been thinking of him as a person.”

“So why do you think he was being ‘mean’ as you put it?” asks Poe, putting his chin to his steepled hands. 

Kylo had been following him up until this point, and he knew that they had reached the portion of the teacher-student relationship where he was supposed to prove that, but he still had no idea.

“My theory is that he’s playing hard to get. He likes you. He wants you to think about him and-” Poe pauses, leaning back in his chair. “-it seems like it’s working.”

Kylo decides that he will never admit such a thing upon pain of death. He scowls and Poe seems to take from that everything he needs. He could almost imagine Hux’s face mimicking his creator’s smug look if he ever found out that his scheme was working. 

“So have you made up your mind on Hux already?” asks Poe, still looking pleased with himself. 

The short answer is yes, he has. Hux is artificial intelligence on a level that Kylo has never dreamed of. He appears to have consciousness and not only that, a personality. He is perplexing, inscrutable, frustrating, and Kylo can’t stop thinking about him. That should be enough for Poe to get on with his further research and development.

The longer answer is something Kylo hasn’t worked out yet, partially because he knows that if he ever managed to really figure it out, he would have no need to meet with Hux again. And if Kylo knows anything for certain, it is that he desperately wants to get back in that room before his three days with Poe Dameron are over. 

“And if I have?” asks Kylo, as a way of avoiding the question. “If he is the greatest piece of artificial intelligence I’ve ever seen. If I do believe he possesses consciousness, what then?”

Poe blinks, not entirely surprised by Kylo but taking his reaction into account. “That’s only the beginning. There is always further testing to be done.”

They leave the table not long after that. Poe offers Kylo a beer and they head out to the porch where he shows Kylo the view of a nearby stream and the mountains. He lets Kylo take a few swings at his punching bag and Kylo thinks he might have actually found something he has in common with this aloof genius who is also his boss. No matter what Kylo does though, he can’t seem to get a read on this strange man.

In interviews, Poe Dameron has always seemed wildly charismatic. A charmer who can talk to anyone, a complete anomaly in the tech community, Kylo had been sure that even his socially inept self would have no trouble holding a conversation with the man. Since arriving, however, that has not been the case. 

It’s all an act he realizes, and a good one. At home, he doesn’t have to be funny or outgoing so he lets the mask slip here. Perhaps Kylo should be grateful he gets to see and meet this version of the man that hardly anyone else has. He doesn’t feel grateful though, he’s mostly annoyed and sweaty from each and every difficult conversation.

They sit together in awkward silence on a living room couch until Kylo decides he can’t take it anymore. He heads back to his room alone and nearly gets lost along the way. He wonders what Hux is doing right now, what he does whenever he is left alone and unstimulated. There’s no way that he remembers which sliding door guarded Hux, he can barely remember which one is his own, but he can’t help but think that any one of the recessed doors he passes could be his. 

On the best of nights, Kylo had trouble sleeping. Underground, feeling claustrophobic, and slightly lost, he goes through the motions of getting ready for bed. The bed isn’t uncomfortable. The room isn’t too dark or too cold, but something feels off nonetheless. He thinks, after spending a few hours lying awake in bed, that the only thing off about this room is himself. He doesn’t belong here, he thinks. For all that Poe has tried to make this place hospitable, he can’t disguise what this place really is: a laboratory, one not meant for human habitation. 

The lights in his room slowly brighten on their on own as the morning hours arrive. He is going to see Hux again today which brightens his mood considerably even after he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The skin under his eyes is so purple it looks bruised, but surely a large cup of coffee will be able to do away with those.

He waits until a suitable hour to wake up at arrives, dresses, and heads upstairs to find breakfast. His stomach is growling and he can’t wait any longer. The route he takes to find a kitchen takes him past the dining room where they ate dinner last night and a den area where it appears Poe fell asleep last night. He is still lying there when Kylo passes by, sprawled out two beer bottles on the coffee table, completely dead to the world.

Poe joins Kylo in the kitchen a half hour later and gives Kylo an odd look for being awake and dressed at such an early hour. Next to Poe, Kylo’s sweater and khakis might as well be a tuxedo. Poe’s dark curls are stuck up at odd angles and his clothes look and smell as though he’s been wearing them for two days, which he has. 

The prodigy is remarkably spry though and doesn’t appear the least bit tired or hungover throughout breakfast. In fact, once Kylo is awake enough to fully take stock of him, he realizes that Poe is just as eager as he is to get Kylo back in a room with Hux. They head there as soon as they are both finished with cereal and coffee, or toast and a thick green smoothie in Poe’s case.

Despite his eyes, itchy with the dryness that comes from being awake all night, Kylo feels more awake than ever as he stands outside Hux’s door and waits to be let in. Poe has retreated to his control room, where he presumably watches and records their encounters. He stands there, trying to imagine what Hux does all night. Does he sleep? Does he power down without anyone to converse with? Does he ever get bored?

As he waits, Kylo thinks he could very easily ask Hux any number of these questions. That’s what he’s here to do. When the doors eventually open, those questions are swept aside. Hux is seated on the other side of the glass. He has been waiting for him, Kylo realizes. The light eyes that stare at him now, darted away from the doors initially, feigning indifference. He seems to have given up on that tactic rather quickly though because his eyes are trained on Kylo now.

“Good morning,” says Kylo. It breaks the silence in the room and sounds inane to Kylo’s ears, but he refuses to feel stupid for common courtesy. Hux responds in kind, but slowly, carefully. To another person’s ears, it might sound robotic, but by looking at him, Kylo can see that he is carefully scrutinizing Kylo and is hanging onto his every minute expression.

“Poe has given me another two days to investigate you,” Kylo says. The words don’t come out exactly the way he means them, but Hux doesn’t appear to take offense. Hux doesn’t say anything at all, as it happens, so Kylo clears his throat and attempts to move on. “So, I was thinking about this last night and I thought that since I asked most of the questions yesterday, you might like to ask me questions today.”

He prepares himself for some kind of snide remark, about why would Hux want to know anything about him, why should he care about some nobody like Kylo, but the slight never comes.

Instead, Hux nods. “Okay,” he says and looks as though he really hadn’t expected this of Kylo. He takes a moment to consider what he will ask Kylo and looks away. When he turns back, he seems to sit straighter somehow, as though he wasn’t perched rigidly on the edge of his chair to begin with. “I will be able to tell if you lie to me, Kylo. So I don’t suggest that you try. Are you sure you want to play this game with me?”

The sound of his name on Hux’s lips sends a shiver down his back. He knows that Hux is programmed to sound this way. He knows, even though Poe hasn’t explained the exact mechanics of how Hux works to him, that Hux’s lips and tongue don’t form the word and he probably doesn’t have vocal chords to make the word vibrate in his chest like that. All the same, the sound of those two syllables in that man’s mouth thrills him. So much so that he hardly heard the words that followed.

“Right,” he says, not quite sure what he is agreeing to. It can’t be too terrible. “Fire when ready,” he adds in an effort to cover up his lapse. 

“What is your favorite color?” asks Hux without preamble.

Kylo blinks for a moment. One look at Hux tells him that the man is completely serious about this question and it almost makes him want to laugh. 

“My favorite color?” he repeats. “Why?”

Hux doesn’t quite frown but his eyebrows pinch together. “It is a question typically used when getting to know another person. It is unobtrusive in nature but has a tendency to reveal something deeper about the personality of the responder.”

Kylo smiles slightly at Hux’s defensive answer, because it is funny and because he thinks that Hux will frown more if he thinks he’s being made fun of. There’s something fantastic about seeing Hux upset, ruffled from his usual perfect composure. 

“Red,” he says, not thinking too much about it. Red has been his standard answer for this question since he was five, he doesn’t have to consider it now. 

Hux tilts his head to the side as though he’s found something interesting. “That’s not true, is it?” he asks. 

“What?” asks Kylo, almost laughing. He begins to realize what he had missed Hux saying initially. “Does it matter if it’s true? Red has been my favorite color for ages, you can go back and look at any ‘get to know me’ questionnaire I’ve ever had to fill out since elementary school. I’m pretty sure it’s on my Facebook profile. It’s not a lie,” he insists, crossing his arms in front of his chest as though that settled things.

“No, it’s not. I didn’t really care what it was, to be honest,” says Hux. “But now that I know you’re trying to cover it up, I am curious to hear what it really is.” He looks smug as he says this and Kylo scowls, picturing the exact same look on Poe’s face the night before. For the first time since he has arrived, he finds himself glad that he is only staying here for another day.

He sputters for a moment, not really believing that he is actually considering whether or not red really is his favorite color. He considers telling Hux that he doesn’t have a favorite color, because really, what grown man has one. Then he comes to the decision that Hux will see that answer for the cop-out it is. 

“Fine. Fine! You want to know what my favorite color is? It’s blue. It was my mom’s favorite color. Every year my dad would get her something for Christmas that was the color of the ocean. Somewhere along the way, I learned to like it too. Happy?” he asks. It comes out a bit savagely and he has no idea how Hux has managed to provoke him this badly. His parents have always been a sore topic, but he’s usually better at keeping a lid on his frustrations with them.

Hux says nothing and Kylo wonders if it’s possible for him to feel pleased. He does a passable imitation of it, even if he can’t really feel it. 

“Right, then,” Kylo says in a huff. He’s willing to do anything in his power to move on from that question and his answer, even if that means subjecting himself to another. “Anything else you want to know about me?”

“Well, if you insist,” says Hux. “What is the first thing you remember?”

This question is far more personal than his last. He gives Kylo no time to prepare for it. Kylo looks at him for a moment, not sure what to say and not sure where this curiosity has come from. 

“Why do you want to know?” asks Kylo, dark brows drawn down. 

Unlike Kylo, Hux appears entirely unphased by the question being asked of him. “Yesterday you asked me about my past, how I was created, how old I was. Is it not natural that I should ask the same of you?”

Kylo supposes he has a point. He doesn’t want to, but he gives Hux’s question some consideration. His earliest memory? Does anyone really have any idea? He is about to give Hux some half-baked explanation of human memory in an attempt to say that he has no idea and that’s really not abnormal. Then, he takes a breath. He does have an idea, a hazy sort of memory that he’s only half-sure ever took place. If he said any of what he had been planning to say to Hux now, Hux would call him out as a liar. Because he does have an idea of his first memory, he’s almost certain now.

“Well, it’s a bit foggy now,” he starts and he sees Hux’s eyes begin to narrow while he waits for him to continue. “But I have this sort of image of my mother and me at a playground. My dad might be there too, strangely enough, but it’s her I remember the most. That’s it,” he finishes, putting an end to his musing before he gets carried away again. He doesn’t like to think about his parents and he’s certainly not going to talk about them with Hux.

Hux doesn’t say anything in response to this either. Kylo thinks he appreciates that about him actually. He doesn’t need to fill the silence with pleasantries. It means that when he does say something, it’s usually important. 

“Anything else?” Kylo asks, feeling self-conscious and willing himself not to run his hand through the back of his hair, a nervous tick that he is sure Hux will notice.

“Just one more question,” Hux’s eyes are bright and human. Kylo thinks he could stare at them all day wondering how Poe managed to make them so expressive and partially believing that there really is some spark of life illuminating them from the inside. “If I told you there was a way to get out from behind this glass and meet me face to face, would you do it?”

Hux never ceases to surprise him, but this question seems to knock the air out of him. “Yes,” he breathes.

He hadn’t thought it was a possibility, but if it was he would be there in a heartbeat on the other side of the glass. In thinking of Hux as a real person, he has seen just how lonely, isolated, and trapped Hux his. He would do anything just to touch him, to see if he is as real as he seems or if the illusion of humanity will be lost once Kylo lays a hand on whatever hard metal, plastic, or silicon he is made of. Kylo doesn’t really believe he’ll be disappointed, though. Something tells him Hux will be exactly as real as he appears. 

Without a word from either of them, the door behind Kylo opens. Kylo turns to look, surprised and on edge. He looks back to Hux, wondering what this could mean. Is there time up? Is Poe trying to discourage this line of thinking from either of them?

Kylo stands and moves to leave, understanding that whatever Poe’s intention, the open door is a heavy signal to leave. He looks back at Hux in silent apology, but Hux doesn’t appear upset. In fact, he seems rather pleased. 

The door shuts behind him and once again Kylo feels like the air in the room has been cut off. A wave of exhaustion overtakes him for a moment and he braces himself against the metal of the recessed door. Sleep is the furthest thing from his mind, but his body desperately craves a few minutes of lying down and doing nothing. 

He looks both ways, still having trouble navigating this labyrinth. Which way is his room again?

Around a corner and two doors down, Kylo hears the distinctive hiss and click of one of these fancy metal doors unlocking. It doesn’t belong to his room. Kylo might be lost but he knows at least this. He has a feeling that it must belong to Hux. The door is still closed, but the panel next to it lights up blue, indicating that it can take Kylo’s keycard. Kylo isn’t sure that he has ever tried to unlock this door before, but he senses that it will let him in this time. 

The blue light changes to green and the sensor spits Kylo’s card back to him. He fumbles with it for a moment, shoving it in his pocket and waiting to watch the door open. When it does and Kylo can step through, he knows this room. He has yet to see it from this angle, but he recognizes it all the same. 

Hux is seated right where Kylo left him, only now he is smiling up at him. Kylo isn’t sure that he has ever seen Hux smile like this before. He probably would have remembered something as brilliant as this. 

Kylo forces himself to stop a few feet away from Hux. He feels tentative suddenly, like he is about to approach some wild animal and he has no idea what he is doing. Desperately, he wants to touch Hux. He knows this. There have been so few people in Kylo’s life that have left him sleepless. So few people have given him a reason to feel this obsessed. He only has another day left to get to know Hux, and he wants to know everything about him.

He can’t help but take in Hux’s appearance now. Hux looks exactly as he did five minutes ago and exactly as he did yesterday, but without the glass barrier Hux looks so much more alive and more solid than he ever did. It’s the idea of him being real that Kylo is obsessed with and the small details of his startling red hair and his flawless but soft and pliable skin are mesmerizing. He looks too good to be real and yet he is all too real. There are exposed lights and wiring at his neck and joints. He is lit up a light blue in places that illuminate his pale skin. Kylo’s eyes take in every inch of him.

At least, until Hux makes a soft noise to interrupt him. Kylo realizes he has been staring.

“Sorry,” Kylo murmurs, but he can’t bring himself to look away.

Hux stands from his chair and actually takes a step towards Kylo. Their similar height is especially evident when they’re close like this. “Don’t be,” Hux says, his voice clear and his accent crisp. Hux doesn’t stop moving towards Kylo until they are a mere foot apart.

Kylo thinks he sees Hux’s chest rise and fall in imitation of breathing. He knows his own is caught in his throat.

He knows what is about to happen and he is certain Hux does too. There is no way the AI misses the micro-expressions he is telegraphing, the way he can’t stop staring at Hux’s lips and wondering what they feel like. _He likes you,_ Poe’s voice supplies unhelpfully in his head. What exactly did that mean in a situation like this?

There is no telling which of them actually makes the first move. Perhaps they met each other halfway. Kylo has no idea. He shut his eyes and leaned forward and Hux is there waiting for him. 

Their lips are clumsy and awkward at first, but Hux prove to be a fast learner. Kylo hadn’t realized that his ability to adapt extended to kissing and wonders if he should talk to Poe about that. They start with just lips on lips, their only point of contact. It makes for a kiss that is adorably chaste and still for a moment, before Kylo steps in closer and places his hand at Hux’s waist. He pulls Hux in closer there and the kiss deepens. 

To Hux’s credit, he was not entirely passive. He mimics Kylo’s movements, occasionally supplying some of his own. Kylo’s hips twitch at the sound of what he thinks is a moan from Hux’s throat. The bastard must have found pornography on the internet and is being creative. Kylo can’t say that he minds really, but they aren’t up to that just yet, not today.

Hux’s hands wind their way through his hair. The pressure they leave is just hard enough, just gentle enough, and Kylo forgets that they aren’t real. Because of course, they’re real. He can feel them, can’t he? So what if they were created by someone else? They have the ability to make him feel. Fascinated, aggravated, dumb-struck, awe-inspired. Kylo forgets that this should feel wrong.

They separate soon enough, Kylo breathing hard and Hux offering up a weak facsimile of blushing cheeks and parted, swollen lips. Kylo almost laughs at the sight and he isn’t sure why. For one of the first times since he has met Hux, he can’t read his expression. The learned expressions aren’t entirely clear just now and Kylo likes to think he has finally done something to really surprise him. 

He smiles at Hux, something wide and honest that he has never shown to Hux before. The room seems to spin when Hux returns it to him. 

When Kylo sees Poe again, later that day, he can’t look the man in the eyes. He gets the feeling that Poe knows exactly what happened between them and is too busy smirking to say anything.


End file.
